


Annotations to Master Strongbo's Principles of Martial Arts, by Li Li Stormstout

by JackOfNone



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Adventure, Gen, Poor Life Choices, Video Game Mechanics, Wuxia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-15
Updated: 2013-04-15
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/pseuds/JackOfNone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the youngest Stormstout meets someone very old indeed, and has a few thoughts about ancient pandaren wisdom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Annotations to Master Strongbo's Principles of Martial Arts, by Li Li Stormstout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/gifts).



“Respect your elders” isn’t exactly something that’s unique to Master Strongbo. It’s practically a foundation of everything pandaren. And from a certain point of view, it makes a whole lot of sense. Master Strongbo also said that you have a finite amount of bad ideas in your life, and the older you are the more bad ideas you’ve used up. 

I don’t know about that — some people seem to _never_ run out of bad ideas, like those folk who were trying to brew beer from nothing but stolen mantid sap and bad feelings — but it’s generally true that the longer you’ve lived, the more you know about stuff. I get that.

I know it’s bad form to contradict your master, especially once he’s passed away, but Master Strongbo always taught me that a martial artist’s greatest asset is not fleetness of foot but quickness of mind, and that freedom of thought is a greater good than freedom of action. So I’m going to go ahead and say that I think this particular proverb needs a little caveat. 

It was a few weeks after Evie died that I met His Excellency Mengde. I was out scouting near the southern coast — Uncle and I had come upon a little shantytown headed up by a fellow who introduced himself as Su-Dao, but everyone called him “Soggy” instead, and I’ve never seen a group of pandaren so happy to see a keg in my life. They’d been shipwrecked there for weeks, or so they said, and we’d stuck around to help out. I had been practicing my spear kata, so Uncle let me go out alone. 

I’d just gotten settled in at the very top of a nearby crag, and I was preparing to climb the only tree in the area that didn’t give me the heebie-jeebies when I heard it.

“Who goes there?” 

It was speaking in pretty good Pandaren, but with a weird accent I couldn’t quite place. I was confused for a second, because the voice sounded pretty far away, but I was sure I was the only one up there. It wasn’t until I’d spent a few moments searching that I spotted the little stone head tucked into the roots of the tree. 

It had a funny-looking face, like a pouting lion with curly mane and two big fangs in front. Its stone eyes were fixed upwards, and it was wearing a little gold circlet with a blue gem set into it. It was tipped halfway over so its ear was sitting in the mud. 

“You there. Girl,” I heard, and this time it was clearly coming from the head. Even though the granite lips didn’t budge, there was no question in my mind. At the time it didn’t seem odd at all.

I poked it with the back end of my spear. It looked to be made of rock, but it was also talking to me, and sticking the pointy end of my spear into something that’s talking isn’t exactly polite behavior even if you’re pretty sure they can’t feel it. 

“Hello, honored sir,” I said. I didn’t know how to address a severed stone head, so I figured it was probably best to be formal. I kneeled down, leaning heavily on my spear. “Are you an earth spirit?” 

“I am no mere spirit,” said the head, with a noise like gravel rattling around in a tankard that I took to be growling. “When I was whole, the elements kneeled at the very sight of me. Those that had no legs flung themselves at the ground in supplication. Do you not recognize the face of a mogu? Have the pandaren not taught their children the names of their destined emperors?” 

I’d heard of mogu, of course — everybody had. One of the Lorewalkers I met on the road in the Vale had a big silk scroll with some kind of painting on it of the great war where everybody banded together and gave the mogu a good face full of pandaren stubbornness. They were all supposed to be gone, but rumors had started circulating that they were back. I didn’t recognize him as a mogu at first, because the painting had shown them being big and strong and powerful, calling down lightning from the sky with a rattle of their massive sabers. This guy was barely bigger than me — a statuette, really — and his face was withered-looking and old.

I poked him with the back end of my spear again, and he made that gravel rumbling noise again. “Get me out of this mud, small creature,” he said. 

“Why should I do that?” I asked. It wasn’t very nice to leave people in the mud, but the mogu were awful by all accounts, so I felt like it was good to be cautious nonetheless. 

“Because I am His Excellency Mengde, the Prefect of the Serpent Cavalry, the Chancellor of the Ninety-Ninth Terracotta Legion, and the Undersecretary of the Spirit Vaults!” he said, as if he expected me to know what all that meant. I told him I’d never heard of the Ninety-Ninth Terracotta Legion or the Serpent Cavalry, and he sighed heavily. “I have stood here for ten thousand years before I was unseated and shattered,” he told me. “I have seen the mantid and pandaren fight side by side only to become enemies once more. I have watched the great tree in the center of these wastes grow from a sapling, and then fall into twisted darkness. I have heard the poems of your first Lorewalker and drunk the first feeble wines of Du Kang—“

“You knew Du Kang?” I interrupted, my eyes widening. “You mean… _that_ Du Kang?”

“I know of no other by that name,” he said. “He was a servant in my master’s hall.” 

I thought for a moment. I’d heard of how awful the mogu were, but this one was so small and…pompous, maybe, but what could a severed stone head really do to anybody? And if he was really over ten thousand years old — and if he really had known Du Kang the Great, the pandaren who _invented_ beer and inspired us all to be free and live for ourselves? There could be so much we could learn from him! Besides, Master Strongbo had always told me to respect my elders — something that had ten thousand years of experience couldn’t be all bad, could he? You’ve got to learn _something_ in all that time, right?

I dug him out from underneath the root and carried him all the way back down to Soggy’s Gamble.

* * *

“You sneak out after your curfew, and you come home with severed tyrant’s head,” Uncle Chen said. I’d sat His Excellency Mengde up on a chair in the Chum Bucket, which was what they’d charmingly named their makeshift tavern down in Soggy’s Gamble. The innkeeper was a fellow who went by “San the Sea Calmer”, but he seemed to spend most of his time asleep rather than miraculously calming storms, so it was as good a place to talk as any. 

I nodded. Uncle Chen sighed heavily and took another drink from his mug. 

“I’m not even sure what to say,” he said. “You’ve left me speechless, little one. Congratulations.” 

“He says that he knew Du Kang the Great,” I said. I kicked the table, and the head wobbled a little. Uncle Chen set down his mug and stared at His Excellency. 

“Is that true?” he asked the head. 

“Why would I lie to puny creatures such as you?” it boomed. I winced, but Uncle only shook his head. 

“He says there’s no reason to lie to us,” I added helpfully. Uncle apparently couldn’t hear His Excellency. 

“And I’m expecting he won’t be offering this knowledge out of the goodness of his little stone heart,” Uncle said. He frowned studiously at his mug of beer. “Li Li, go upstairs and fetch me a keg of our own brew. The stuff they’re serving here is…” Uncle clucked his tongue thoughtfully for a moment before pronouncing a verdict of “oily”. 

I rushed upstairs for one of our last kegs and tapped it open while Uncle thought. Thinking is something that Uncle does a lot of — that’s another thing Master Strongbo used to say. “Thousand thoughts, one action, Li Li — not the reverse!” I try to do more thinking before I act these days, but if I thought things over as much as Uncle did, I swear I would go mad.

While Uncle Chen refreshed his thoughts with a drink of real pandaren lager that didn’t have any suspicious fish elements, I went over what I’d said to His Excellency. He wanted his body back — a reasonable enough request, given the circumstances. Apparently the rest of it had sunk to the bottom of the cove, and it had frustrated him to no end that there was a whole gaggle of pandaren here that had nets and dredges that he couldn’t get to retrieve it. I told Uncle Chen that he’d promised a reward if we could get his body back together — a reward that consisted of the location of Du Kang’s final resting place. 

I thought it was a fair trade, and told Uncle so. Besides, he swore on his word that he’d lead us to the resting place of Du Kang the Great, and the Loremaster’s scroll had said that as bad as mogu were, they always kept their word no matter what.

Uncle Chen looked at me over the rim of his mug. “Is there anything I can possibly say or do that will stop you?” he said.

I shook my head. 

“Thought not.” He closed his eyes and took a final sip of the brew, licking his lips. “You’re fourteen, plenty old enough to make your own damned mistakes. Just don’t drink anything you can’t pay for, Li Li.” 

Uncle Chen said this a lot. In retrospect, I don’t think he ever actually expected me to put Mengde back together. I think he expected me to get as far as the ocean, take one look at the brackish water and the gross fish and the sharp rocks, and give up on the whole thing. 

For someone so very interested in family, it sometimes seems like Uncle doesn’t know the Stormstouts very well at all.

* * *

Locating the majority of His Excellency wasn’t too hard. Just like he said, it had fallen to the bottom of the cove. Now, if you’re the sort of person who has fur, you probably understand why pandaren don’t like to get wet. The only cure for a wet pandaren, so my Uncle says, is hot tea and patience.

Now, I think both Master Strongbo and Uncle Chen would agree that patience is not really one of my strong suits. I bartered with the Anglers for use of their nets and trawls. It cost me one of my less volatile experimental brews and my last bottle of Halfhill shoyu, and it stirred up the mud on the bottom and caused a bunch of super-gross and totally inedible sea worms to flop onto the beach for a week, but we got the vast majority of his body out of the cove and onto the beach. Minus one staff of office. As it turns out, this was of critical importance to His Excellency. I can’t pretend to understand politics.

“Do you have any idea where the staff’s got to?” I asked. I’d propped His Excellency up on one of the brackish dunes, in a little nest of wet sawgrass. 

“Saurok,” he said. “They must have taken it. There was a raid that went past here before you revolting creatures arrived.” 

Mengde insulted me a lot, but honestly being insulted by someone who can’t hurt you is sometimes more entertaining than threatening. Maybe he was arrogant and abrasive, but I bet I would be pretty put out if I’d had to spend thousands of years as a statue before somebody knocked me over.

“I’ll find your staff,” I said, bowing a little. “Even if it seems a little silly to be so concerned.” His Excellency made an irritated noise.

* * *

Luck, it is said, often follows the bold. Now, Uncle and Master Strongbo often have a lot of strong words for me about patience, but I don’t think they’d ever disagree on the subject of my boldness. Not to say I haven’t been scared — far from it. But in general I’ve found that the best reaction to being scared is to bare my teeth at it until it stops being quite so scary anymore.

At any rate, it wasn’t but a few days of tuning out His Excellency’s rambling that Uncle Chen agreed to make an expedition into saurok territory. A hesitant exploration of the outskirts of Soggy’s Gamble by the stranded Anglers had revealed that there was a raiding party of saurok crossing into the Dread Wastes — with a captive pandaren in tow, kept in a cage like an animal. They were headed towards the center of the Wastes — whether to fight with the mantid or pay some kind of tribute, no one could say. Su-dao swore that the prisoner was wearing the colors of a Lorewalker, but that didn’t matter — she could be the lowliest farmer and she’d still be worth mounting a rescue for, as far as we’re concerned. Since the roads were all but impassable to anyone who didn’t have a small army or a Stormstout at their back, Uncle had volunteered for the job. I’ve hardly ever seen him so grim — I don’t think he expected her to be alive when he got there. 

His Excellency swore up and down that this was the very saurok that had taken away his staff of office, or at least one of his lineage. “I never forget a soul,” he said, which in retrospect was rather a disturbing thing to say, but I’d gotten used to sort of only paying attention to a good half of what Mengde babbled into my head. Often I think he just kept talking because I wasn’t listening. 

“Awful lucky, isn’t it?” I said. “Maybe Niuzao is smiling on us, hm?”

“Tch. That tribe of saurok has been making this expedition every few weeks for generations of their foul breed. They were bound to come back.” 

“Well, it’s still lucky for you that the raiders who took your staff are the punctual ones,” I said solemnly. 

Uncle Chen absolutely forbade me to wade into enemy territory just to fulfill a dubious bargain with a talking lump of rock. There’s making your own mistakes, he said, and then there’s just being foolish. 

I’m not _proud_ of being disobedient, mind. It’s a terrible flaw and I’m sure I’ll get a great long talking-to in the Hereafter from the Jade Serpent about it once I’ve finally become an ancestor myself.

Regardless, I followed Uncle Chen all the way to the saurok camp with His Excellency Mengde’s head strapped to my back. I took an extra spear, a cask of Anglers fish-beer, and a bottle of excellent yet highly flammable soju. Just in case.

* * *

I’ve never smelt something so awful in all my life. Filth and rot and a dozen other hideous stenches all mixed together into a miasma that was a real, tangible force — it felt like a swarm of flies trying to crawl inside my mouth. I doused my sash in some soju and wrapped it around my muzzle to keep out the worst of it, and set about climbing the big tree that the saurok had camped under. Tree-climbing is in my blood — you should have seen me in the bamboo forests of the Wandering Isle, leaping from branch to branch — Master Strongbo himself even admitted that my lightness of foot was phenomenal. I’m not trying to brag — I’m only mentioning this because I really want you to understand what a heroic effort climbing a Dread Wastes tree really is. Give me any other tree in all the eight directions and I’ll be at the top of it before you can finish a bowl of rice, but the trees in the Dread Wastes seem to have soaked up horror from the very ground like water. Their form is twisted, their leaves are sharp and pitch black like the touch of night itself, and they seep an oily sap that feels exactly like everything you never wanted to put your paws into. Regardless, I gritted my teeth and set myself to climbing. 

From my hard-won vantage point, I could see the entire place. They’d set up camp for the night — the cage with the poor unconscious pandaren, the saurok chief with his frilled head and venom dripping from his mouth, seated in a makeshift throne, and laying across his spiny knees a stone staff painted in garish colors and adorned with bones. 

Mengde hissed. “That’s it,” he said. “Thunder King’s wrath take them, they’ve _decorated_ it!”

There was a crowd of saurok in front of the chieftain, all bunched around something I couldn’t see. The chieftain bellowed, and they fell back a step, showing me what they had all been protecting. 

Uncle Chen. 

How he got there I had no idea, but there had to be a good ten of them — more than even Uncle could handle in a straight fight. I clapped a paw over my mouth to keep from letting out a little yelp of alarm. 

“The staff!” Mengde hissed. I ignored him, took a deep breath, and jumped. 

I landed in a pool of watery muck that was deep enough that I sunk in over my head. There was a terrific splash, and the two seconds that I spent submerged ranks among the worst in my life. They wouldn’t remain distracted for long — I lost no time in kicking to the surface and flinging the cask with all my might towards Uncle Chen. 

He took the opening. His leg paw whipped out with speed that still astonished even me, and he smashed the keg into the ground, spilling a quantity of fishy, oily — and slick — beer all over the ground. The saurok charged forward and lost their footing — only for a moment, but a moment is all you need when you’re somebody like Uncle Chen, who knows that moments are often all you get. I swear he knocked out one saurok for every paw, and an extra one with his head, before he dashed to the poor Lorewalker’s cage. It was just made out of thin bamboo, and Xuen knows Uncle’s shattered enough of that in his time. The flimsy thing was splinters practically before he even hit it. 

The chieftain went for me, his mouth open and showing row after endless row of horrible fangs. I screamed, half in anger and half in terror, and smashed the bottle of soju right in his eyes. 

Have you ever seen what a potent bottle of soju does to a pair of huge reptilian eyes that barely ever blink? It’s not nice. 

“My staff! My staff my staff my staff!” Mengde repeated, like a petulant child. I brought my spear down on the chieftain’s claw, knocking the staff out of his hand. It fell into pieces on the way down — apparently it’d already been broken, and the saurok were holding it together with bone splints and sinew. I grabbed all three pieces and made a break for it, not looking back until I felt Uncle Chen’s paw on my shoulder. 

“Are you mad at me, Uncle Chen?” I asked once we were safely some distance away, even though I knew it was a stupid question. 

“Furious,” Chen said. I chewed my lip. Even so, he pulled me into a hug as best he could with an unconscious Lorewalker slung across his back. Slowly, he let me go, and wrinkled his nose as he surveyed me head to toe, covered in filth from my dip in the saurok pool. “…Though,” he said, thoughtfully, his muzzle starting to curl into the barest hint of a smile, “I think Xuen might have cleverly punished you for your insolence already.”

He was right. I still don’t think I’ve quite washed off the stink.

* * *

I put His Excellency back together with amber. He said he would have preferred a stonemason, but in the Dread Wastes amber is basically what you have. Besides, it’s quite fetching when it hardens, all glittering gold and translucent, and I told him so. Mengde didn’t think it was funny. 

Even the sun struggled to show its face in the Dread Wastes. I had set up His Excellency on the beach, just across from one of the Anglers’ prize shark catch and right next to the gong that they sometimes used to call folk in from fishing. I propped him up with sticks until the amber could harden, and waited. 

It wasn’t long before I felt something itching in the back of my skull. It was the damnedest feeling, like there were bugs on the inside of my head, and I shook it to get it out and that’s when it hit me.

It was like a blast of terrible noise inside my head, louder than anything I’ve ever heard, so powerful it knocked me flat on my back and left me gasping and thrashing in the sand. It wasn’t just a noise, though — it was a voice, compelling and irresistable and terrible as thunder.

 _HIS EXCELLENCY COMMENDS YOUR SERVICE,_ I heard, and with great effort I turned my head to face the statue. It seemed impossible that this enormous voice should come from something that looked so old and withered, but it was plain as day that it was his voice. 

It was getting harder and harder to breath. I clawed at my throat. 

“What…about…your promise,” I said. “Du Kang…” 

_I PROMISED I WOULD SHOW YOU WHERE DU KANG RESTS, BUT YOU HAVE BEEN OF GREAT SERVICE TO ME. INSTEAD OF SHOWING YOU A DESERTED RUIN, I WILL SEND YOU TO MEET HIM PERSONALLY,_ the voice boomed. _IN THE COUNTRY OF THE JADE SERPENT, BEYOND THE VEIL OF DEATH._

I choked something indistinct. My eyes darted around, and fell upon the hardening amber that made up his joints. 

_Amber’s a living thing,_ the Sapmasters had said. _It flows, it dances in the sunlight…why, it even goes all to pieces when it hears a beautiful song, just like us!_ And then he’d hit a tuning fork and shattered the golden crystal with only a note. 

I chewed at the sand, desperately, until I had a pebble in my mouth. With one final heroic breath, I spat the pebble hard as I could towards the gong. 

I have Master Strongbo to thank for the fact that the pebble hit that gong hard enough to reverberate throughout the village — hard enough, indeed, to crack the weak, newly-set amber that held Mengde together. He always told me breathing was the foundation of martial arts and the most important thing of all. It seemed like such an obvious thing to say — of _course_ breathing is important! If you’re not breathing you’re dead, right? But I think in that moment I understood what Master Strongbo was really trying to say. 

If you can still breathe, you’re still alive. If you’re still alive, it means you have a chance. It means they haven’t won yet. 

So I took what I thought was my last breath, and I used it to go down fighting. 

All in all, I think it worked out. 

That might have been the end of His Excellency Mengde — and I maybe should have kicked him off into the cove and forgotten he ever existed — but that comment about the ruins made me think he wasn’t lying after all about knowing where Du Kang the Great finally laid down his head. Uncle set the head up at the entrance to Stormstout brewery once we spruced the place up a little, and he’s quite the conversation piece. I visit sometimes to see if he’s changed, or if he feels like really coming through on his end of the bargain, but he hasn’t so far. 

You can learn a lot in a few thousand years. I imagine there are some creatures that old that are wiser than I can possibly imagine — and then there are some folk who won’t learn a thing in that same time except uncountable ways to be cruel. 

So, for now…I’d say respect your elders, but watch out, because if it’s over a hundred, still alive, and not one of the Great Immortals, it’s probably some kind of monster.

**Author's Note:**

> Now with more Author's Notes!
> 
> This is unfortunately only vaguely in line with the _Pearl of Pandaria_ comics, because I couldn't get ahold of them in time to finish the fic. 
> 
> This is also pretty transparently inspired by the Crumbled Chamberlain quest in WoW...I've been carrying that talking head around in my bag forever and I've grown kind of attached to the belligerent little guy, and I was sort of fascinated by [this concept art](http://www.wowpedia.org/images/6/65/Mogu_Concept_Art2.jpg) of a smaller, more wizened mogu. Mengde I named after Three Kingdoms villain Cao Cao, and Du Kang after the real-life semi-legendary inventor of liquor, whom Cao Cao eulogized in a poem -- because even tyrants can see the benefits of a good drink, I suppose.


End file.
